The present invention is directed to an improved articulated knife rotor assembly for use in a machine for reducing materials, and to a machine including such assembly. The present invention is particularly directed to such improved assembly in a machine for reducing by cutting action various materials, such as sugar cane, paper, trash, etc.
It is known to grind up or reduce in size various material by means of an assembly including a rotor having therearound a plurality of knives. In such known arrangements, the rotors are constructed according to the same general design which includes a shaft on the periphery of which are mounted, either pivotally or rigidly, a plurality of cutting blades, the tips of which rotate past the surface or deck of a conveyer which feeds the material to be reduced. The construction of a conventional pivotally mounted knife rotor assembly has invariably included a number of discs disposed axially on a shaft and inter-connected near their peripheries by means of a plurality of longitudinal pivot bars onto which are mounted rows of knife blades which lie between the discs.
This type of conventional arrangement does however suffer from certain inherent disadvantages. Thus, there is no way to replace a single blade without having to pull out the entire rod on which the blade to be replaced is supported. This operation becomes even more difficult when the blade in question happens to be located other than at the end of the roll, since all of the blades preceding the blade to be replaced have to be removed before replacement can be made. The type of rod involved can only be pulled out sideways, and thus special and expensive arrangements must be made to make room for the rod to be pulled entirely outwardly so as to not interfere with exterior equipment of the machine, such as the drive assembly, fly wheel, etc.
Additionally, the size of the rods involved is usually limited to be approximately 1.5" in diameter. This size is too small of a bearing area for the blades, and therefore the rods and the portions of the blades which rotate about the rods are subjected to a high rate of wear during operation of the machine.
Due to the above disadvantages, the conventional pivotally mounted knife blade rotor assembly has not found wide acceptance in various industries around the world.
The type of knife rotor assembly used in the sugar cane industry throughout substantially the entire world is a conventional rigidly mounted knife blade rotor assembly. However, the use of such assemblies having rigidly mounted knife blades has gradually become more of a problem, since the sugar cane industry is shifting from hand to mechanical harvesting and/or loading of sugar cane due to the amount of foreign material, such as rocks and tramp iron which find their way along with the sugar cane to the cane processing factories. Upon encountering such hard foreign materials, rigidly mounted knife blades are almost invariably broken, and the resultant broken blade pieces often find their way to the the mills in the sugar cane factories, thereby causing considerable damage to the mill rollers and impairing the juice extraction production efficiency of the entire milling plant. The frequently broken rigidly mounted blades have to be replaced, and this results in a loss of extraction through the loss of sugar in bagasse following a work stoppage.